We are sure you realize what a big honor this is, and are confident you will not allow personal considerations to prevent you from accepting. The visits are due to take place at the end of next month, about the 23rd, but the selected Comrades will travel separately as their invitations are not all concurrent. Will you please let us know as soon as possible whether you can accept, and we will let you have further details.
The more she read it, the odder it seemed. Such short notice for a start–how could they know she could get away from the library? Then to her surprise she recalled that Ashe had asked her what she did for her holidays, whether she had taken her leave this year, and whether she had to give a lot of notice if she wanted to claim free time. Why hadn’t they told her who the other nominees were? There was no particular reason why they should, perhaps, but it somehow looked odd when they didn’t. It was such a long letter, too. They were so hard up for secretarial help at Centre they usually kept their letters short, or asked Comrades to ring up. This was so efficient, so well typed, it might not have been done at Centre at all. But it was signed by the Cultural Organizer; it was his signature all right, no doubt of that. She’d seen it at the bottom of notices masses of times. And the letter had that awkward, semibureaucratic, semi-Messianic style she had grown accustomed to without ever liking. It was stupid to say she had a good record of stimulating mass action at street level. She hadn’t. As a matter of fact she hated that, side of party work– the loudspeakers at the factory gates, selling the _Daily_ at the street corner, going from door to door at the local elections. Peace work she didn’t mind so much, it meant something to her, it made sense. You could look at the kids in the street as you went by, at the mothers pushing their prams and the old people standing in doorways, and you could say, “I’m doing it for them.” That really was fighting for peace.
But she never quite saw the fighting for votes and the fighting for sales in the same way. Perhaps that was because it cut them down to size, she thought. It was easy when there were a dozen or so together at a Branch meeting to rebuild the world, march at the vanguard of socialism and talk of the inevitability of history. But afterwards she’d go out into the streets with an armful of _Daily Worker’s_, often waiting an hour, two hours, to sell a copy. Sometimes she’d cheat, as the others cheated, and pay for a dozen herself just to get out of it and go home. At the next meeting they’d boast about it–forgetting they’d bought them themselves–“Comrade Gold sold eighteen copies on Saturday night–eighteen!” It would go in the Minutes then, and the Branch bulletin as well. District would rub their hands, and perhaps she’d get a mention in that little panel on the front page about the Fighting Fund. It was such a little world, and she wished they could be more honest. But she lied to herself about it all, too. Perhaps they all did. Or perhaps the others understood more _why_ you had to lie so much.
It seemed so odd they’d made her Branch Secretary. It was Mulligan who’d proposed it–“Our young, vigorous and attractive comrade… .” He’d thought she’d sleep with him if he got her made Secretary. The others had voted for her because they liked her, and because she could type. Because she’d do the work and not try and make them go canvassing on weekends. Not too often anyway. They’d voted for her because they wanted a decent little club, nice and revolutionary and no fuss. It was all such a fraud. Alec had seemed to understand that; he just hadn’t taken it seriously. “Some people keep canaries, some people join the Party,” he’d said once, and it was true. In Bayswater South it was true anyway, and District knew that perfectly well. That’s why it was so peculiar that she had been nominated; that was why she was extremely reluctant to believe that District had even had a hand in it. The explanation, she was sure, was Ashe. Perhaps he had a crush on her; perhaps he wasn’t queer but just looked it.